The present invention relates to price management systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for future-pricing in an integrated price management system.
It is often advantageous for a business enterprise to have a system whereby a sales force can offer existing and potential customers assurances with respect to pricing. In particular, a sales force may wish to guarantee a high volume customer that the proposed price for a particular product is, and will remain for the life of the deal, the lowest price offered to any customer. If, at any time during the life of the deal, the product in question is sold at a lower price to any customer, the guaranteed lowest price offered to the original customer will be changed to meet the current lowest price.
This type of lowest price guarantee status accorded to a particular product or set of products in a deal is called most favored nation (MFN) status. MFN status is established by the inclusion of an appropriate MFN clause in the deal. Customers offered MFN status are assured that the related product or set of products will be priced at a price lower than or equal to the lowest price offered for said product or product set. In effect, granting MFN status is a way of future-pricing a product to be the lowest offered going forward. In a particular business enterprise, there may be any number of MFN clauses in any number of deals.
Businesses employ a myriad of enterprise resource planning tools in order to manage and control business processes. For example, systems like SAP are employed to facilitate management by using objective data in order gain enterprise efficiencies. By manipulating objective data, these systems offer consistent metrics upon which business may make informed decisions and policies regarding the viability and direction of their products and services. However, in many cases, the decisions and policies may be difficult to procure as a result of the volume and organization of relevant data and may be difficult to administer as both temporal restraints and approval processes may inhibit rapid deployment of valuable information.
In particular, in the context of incorporating an MFN policy into an integrated price management system within the context of said enterprise resource planning system, information regarding MFN clauses throughout the system may be difficult to obtain. A sales force, however, in deciding whether or not to grant MFN status needs to have ready access to MFN information in order to determine the potential system-wide impact of so doing.
It is often the case that a sales force may need to obtain various levels of approval before offering a customer MFN status for a particular product. In order for management to make an informed decision on whether to grant MFN status in a particular case, they must have all relevant MFN impact information. An MFN clause violation may have potential impact across a number of deals and commitment periods. Of course, potential impact for future commitment periods may not be realized if, for example, a customer fails to meet a commitment volume. In any case, it is imperative for effective enterprise resource planning that all relevant MFN data be accessible.
As such, methods for generating and displaying MFN impact data across all impacted deals in a timely manner, as well as systems and methods for incorporating MFN clauses into deals in a manner guaranteeing their effectiveness may be desirable to achieve system-wide price management efficiency.
In view of the foregoing, Integrated Price Management Systems with Future-Pricing and Methods Therefor are disclosed.